RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • Confronting Both Zionism and the Antisemitism It Welcomes

    Source: exile in happy valley
    by Nicky Reid

    “We must all confront Israel, but we must also confront this toxic runoff along with it and we must confront them both simultaneously with the weapon of history. The Jews are not the problem here, Zionism is, and Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism or the Semitic people. In fact, Zionism is really just another malignant cell of white supremacy, and it has long disdained both Judaism and most people of Semitic de[s]cent. Zionism emerged from central and eastern Europe during the mid-19th century as a distinctly secular strain of the same European national swamp that would fester into fascism and national socialism, and it caried many of the same characteristics too; devotion to such toxically contrived notions as ‘blood and soil’ and scientific racism, not to mention a pronounced disdain for the east, including the Jews who once closely identified with it.” (04/05/26)

    https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/04/confronting-both-zionism-and.html

  • A journalist who uses AI? The internet was not pleased.

    Source: Washington Post
    by Megan McArdle

    “On Thursday morning, I sat down with one of my chatbots and asked it to round up the best takes on a recent social media controversy. The results were unsatisfying — hallucinations, apologies and search results that weren’t what I’d asked for. After several prompts and corrections, the chatbot seemed to give up. Shortly thereafter, so did I. Fortunately, I was intimately familiar with this controversy, since I touched it off. In social media parlance, I was ‘the main character,’ so I already had plenty of raw material and could see how badly ChatGPT had failed. But if you’re hoping for a column on why artificial intelligence is useless, I regret to disappoint.” (04/05/26)

    https://archive.is/OAJpF

  • On war, Trump must remember the wisdom of St. Augustine

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Ronald Dodson

    “The ‘just war’ theologian understood that force must be governed by prudence, reckoning with second and third order effects. We didn’t do that in Iraq, or now.” (04/05/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/war-global-impact/

  • A Delicate Balance

    Source: Foundation for Economic Education
    by Jake Scott

    “‘Strong, if not perfect’ was European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s verdict on the trade deal hammered out between the United States and the European Union (EU) and signed at Turnberry, Scotland, in July 2025. Nothing is perfect, of course — but the carefully hedged endorsement has appeared increasingly prophetic as the deal overcame hurdles and was finally voted through by the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee on March 19, 2026, by 29 votes to 9, and by the wider Parliament on March 26, by 417 votes to 154. The road to passing was not a smooth one.” (04/05/26)

    https://fee.org/articles/a-delicate-balance/

  • The Lost Art of Medicine: What Maimonides Knew That We Forgot

    Source: Brownstone Institute
    by Joseph Varon

    “Contemporary medicine is not failing for lack of knowledge. It is failing under the weight of its own complexity. The present era is defined by unprecedented access to data, advanced technologies, an ever-expanding network of subspecialties, and a dense architecture of protocols and performance metrics. Nearly every aspect of patient care can now be measured, quantified, and standardized. Interventions that were unimaginable only decades ago are now routine. Yet despite these advances, a fundamental element has been eroded. This erosion is philosophical.” (04/05/26)

    https://brownstone.org/articles/the-lost-art-of-medicine-what-maimonides-knew-that-we-forgot/

  • Stop Pretending Military Spending is About “Defense”

    Source: Garrison Center
    by Thomas L Knapp

    “At the height of the US war in Vietnam, in 1969, the US government spent about $85.5 billion ($761 billion in inflated 2026 dollars) on ‘defense.’ In 1991, when the US deployed hundreds of thousands of troops for Desert Storm, the US government spent about $313 billion, or $750 billion accounting for inflation. In 2004, while fighting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that number was about $450 billion, or $780 billion in 2026 dollars. … The president keeps telling us THIS war will be over Real Soon Now, and he started talking about a $1.5 trillion military budget months before he launched Operation Epic Fail, so the 40% bump clearly isn’t about Iran. In what universe does the already bloated US military need nearly half again as much money next year as this year, and twice as much as it needed during previous wars?” (04/03/26)

    https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20499

  • The Republican Plan To Nationalize Elections Is Performative Nonsense

    Source: Reason
    by Steven Greenhut

    “Under Donald Trump’s leadership, the GOP’s outlook is simple: Every election they win is a reflection of the will of the people. Every election they lose is rigged. The president never conceded the 2020 election, nor apologized for the January 6 Capitol attack. That was the result of angry partisans taking seriously Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims. Trump continues to push the tiresome rigged-election narrative even though he failed to win the dozens of court cases making such claims. Lately, Republicans aren’t doing well at the polls. … Instead of moderating their policies or engaging in normal soul searching, Republicans are doubling dow — and trying to nationalize elections by promoting something called the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act.” (04/03/26)

    https://reason.com/2026/04/03/the-republican-plan-to-nationalize-elections-is-performative-nonsense/

  • The Last Conservatives

    Source: The Dispatch
    by Kevin D Williamson

    “What is sometimes described by the aggrandizing term ‘judicial activism’ is not really jurisprudence at all, properly understood: It is what happens when judges (and the legal commentariat) decide on the outcome first — ‘Of course Colorado can use the law to silence those homophobic creeps!’ — and then fill in the legal arguments post hoc and willy-nilly. But the desire for such outcome-driven jurisprudence, long a hallmark of the progressive model of social change, is increasingly prevalent among Republicans, for obvious reasons: There is no one in these United States more offended by a display of principle — or by adherence to official duties — than Donald Trump, who is the most profoundly morally corrupt man ever to occupy the office he holds.” (04/03/26)

    https://archive.is/k8vFh

  • Deuce Bigelow, Political Philosopher

    Source: Common Sense
    by Paul Jacob

    “Americans have not endured a military draft since the 1970s. Our bodies and very lives aren’t conscript. Just our fortunes. Not perfect, true, but as political trades go it’s better for equal freedom than slightly lower taxes and a return of the draft, which conscripts some to benefit (the story runs) ‘all.’ The all-volunteer force has produced the world’s best military … without ‘slave’ labor. Comedian Rob Schneider thinks differently.” (04/03/26)

    https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/04/03/deuce-bigelow-political-philosopher/

  • Why Is America Experiencing A Lower Birthrate?

    Source: Independent Institute
    by Scott Beyer

    “An oddly divergent narrative has taken hold in the commentary class. On one hand, many argue that America’s declining birthrate is the predictable result of too much prosperity. As societies grow wealthier, more educated, and more urban, they tend to have fewer children — a pattern across nearly every developed nation. Meanwhile a competing view holds that Americans are not having children because they are not wealthy enough — that the prime childbearing generations are facing stagnant wages, rising costs, and downward mobility. These two explanations seem contradictory, yet both contain elements of truth — and even work in tandem.” (04/04/26)

    https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/04/why-is-america-experiencing-a-lower-birthrate/

  • A seed of peace in the Iran war

    Source: Christian Science Monitor
    by staff

    “Over the past 100 years of wars, one incentive for peace has been a shared interest in preventing or ending famines – by opening humanitarian corridors. Adversaries would pause hostilities to allow food-related products to reach blameless, hungry civilians. Such a moment of goodwill sometimes opened a diplomatic window for a war to end. A similar tenderness toward the innocent is now being expressed during the Iran war. A number of countries including Italy, as well as the United Nations, are probing a diplomatic deal in which Iran would allow ships to sail through the Strait of Hormuz carrying raw materials for agricultural fertilizer made in Gulf Arab countries. Until the current war with Iran started Feb. 28, about a third of the world’s supplies of petroleum-based synthetic fertilizer products passed through the maritime choke point.” (04/03/26)

    https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0403/A-seed-of-peace-in-the-Iran-war